Blackbird
by TrailingJasmine
Summary: She never knew it, but Andromeda Black was only waiting for this moment to arrive. AndromedaTed.


_**Author's Note**_

_This little piece came into my head on the train home on Friday evening, after a week of mentally exhausting work experience at a Magic Circle law firm in London. I was just listening to the_ _Doves cover of The Beatles song _Blackbird_, and to the lyrics, when I realised how perfectly they fitted Andromeda. And with that, I had to write this: it's a single piece, complete. I suppose some might call it a songfic, but I prefer to think of it as a drabble or a vignette._

_ Anyway, enjoy. I certainly enjoyed writing it._

_Also, a final point to note: this is not the same plotline as my other ongoing Ted and Andromeda fic (_Killing Time in the Seventies

_ ----------------------------------------------------------_

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night_  
_Take these broken wings and learn to fly_  
_All your life_  
_You were only waiting for this moment to arrive._

Sigh, and turn the page. Let your eyes flick down over the text. Memorise those words, those instructions. Words that give life, words that change all, words that bring destruction. Andromeda Black knows these words; knows their force. She knows how easy it is for words to give life, to change all, and to bring destruction. Sigh, and turn the page.

It's easy to forget about things when you immerse yourself in your work. Deep in tomes of spells, of history, of magic lore, all those heartaches melt away into the back of the mind, melt away into nothing. Andromeda Black knows about heartaches. Andromeda Black also knows that words do not need to have magical power to give life, to change all, to bring destruction. And three little words can change everything.

It feels like hours later when she lifts her head, and for the first time finds the library abandoned. It's a Saturday afternoon; why should anybody be here anyway? Slytherin are playing Ravenclaw. Everybody is at the Quidditch pitch. Andromeda should be there, Lucius Malfoy's arm around her waist, cheering her friends to victory. She wondered whose waist his arm would be around instead of hers. Slytherin should be flattening Ravenclaw, and as if on cue, she hears the roaring cheers in the distance. She idly speculates who scored, then realises that it doesn't matter. Quidditch cups come and go with the years, and victories fade to tiny engravings on silver, and golden letters painted on wooden boards. _People fade too_, Andromeda thinks to herself. _People fade to words and dates engraved on stone_.

Reveries invite themselves to be disturbed. Just as Andromeda came to that final conclusion, the library door swung open, and in rushed a tall, sandy haired boy carrying a pile of books. Andromeda smiled to herself; here was her entertainment for the rest of the afternoon. She couldn't count the number of hours of lessons and studying which had been brightened up, effortlessly, by the effortless humour of Edward Tonks.

'Andromeda!' Ted exclaimed. 'I thought you'd be at the Quidditch?'

'Could ask you the same thing,' Andromeda smiled. 'I'm… working.'

'You mean you're getting away from everything,' Ted said firmly. 'I don't blame you.'

'I'm _working_,' Andromeda said firmly. 'And what's your excuse?'

'Quidditch,' Ted said, banging his books onto the table and sitting down firmly opposite her, 'is fucking boring. Give me West Ham versus Spurs any day.'

'Football, you mean?' Andromeda recognised the names and sighed, and Ted nodded enthusiastically. 'It's hardly better. Just a group of Mug… people kicking a ball around.'

'Football,' Ted said gravely, 'is an artform. You ask any professional footballer – it's art, what they do. It's beautiful.'

'Football isn't beautiful,' Andromeda said firmly. 'Now Quidditch, that's beautiful. Think of all the skill, the dexterity of all the players, the snap decisions they have to make…'

'Same in football,' Ted argued, 'only they don't have a broom. They have to do everything Quidditch players do – and run at the same time. You have to be really, really fit.'

There was a pause. 'Do you miss it?' Andromeda said quietly.

'Of course,' Ted said. 'But there's more to life than football.'

'I meant, do you miss… do you miss being a Muggle?' Ted looked at her, and frowned.

'I was never a Muggle, really,' he said quietly, and took a book from the pile and opened it. Andromeda gently bit her tongue, and closed her eyes, as silence descended on the library.

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night_  
_Take these sunken eyes and learn to see_  
_All your life _  
_You were only waiting for this moment to be free._

Late November, walking across the frosty lawns to the greenhouses for Herbology. Andromeda's hands are frozen, and not for the first time does she regret leaving her soft suede gloves in her dormitory. But the cold isn't really distracting her from the pictures in her head; the vision of her younger sister and Lucius Malfoy sitting together on one of the common room sofas. She had watched from beneath her eyelashes as they edged closer and closer together, until eventually Narcissa was on his lap, Lucius stroking her hair.

Andromeda screws her eyes shut as she remembers the feeling in the pit of her stomach. As if in some automatic reflexive motion, her stomach twists. It remembers the feeling, too.

'Hey! Wait a second!' She hears the cry from behind her, and turns around, to see Ted, who is in her Herbology class, running towards her. 'You dropped these,' he says, and hands her the pair of school issue gardening gloves that had been in her robe pocket.

'Oh, thanks!' Andromeda says brightly. 'I'd be sunk if I showed up at Herbology without them.'

Thinking of Herbology prompts Andromeda to ask, 'Are you coming then?' a little archly.

'Of course.' Ted shifts the books in his arms and smiles at her. Andromeda smiles back, then looks away, feeling the colour rise to her cheeks. Why is she blushing? Why is she blushing in front of Ted, of all people? As they make their way to the greenhouses together in silence, Andromeda suddenly feels warm on this bitterly cold November morning.

_Blackbird fly, blackbird fly  
Into the light of a dark black night._

The night before the last day of term. Andromeda has been in the library for hours, finishing up essays in preparation for the holidays. She hates working at home, hates working when she could be having fun playing games of Exploding Snap, pulling crackers, enjoying Christmas lunch. But even she is ready to leave by half past eight, and so heads out of the library, down the stairs to the Slytherin common room.

The halls of Hogwarts are always magnificent in December. Maybe she's more emotional than she normally is, but the Christmas feeling is getting to Andromeda. She feels a lump rising in her throat. She loves Hogwarts so, and the thought of it being her last end of autumn term in this castle of dreams…

Rounding a corner, she crashes straight into someone coming in the other direction. 'Jesus, watch where you're going!' Ted Tonks exclaims, before seeing Andromeda. 'Oh, I'm so sorry,' he gasps. 'I didn't realise it was you.'

'It's fine,' Andromeda says quickly. 'It's fine.' She crouches down and starts picking up the papers she's dropped; Ted joins her.

'Are you looking forward to Christmas?' he says, casually. Andromeda looks up; his head is down, eyes focused on picking up the papers. She suddenly realises that she'll miss him over the holidays – miss his jokes, miss his witty comments in Herbology. She'll miss that voice, that smile, that laugh.

'Yes. It'll be nice to see my family, nice to go home. Are you?'

'It's all about home. There's nowhere on earth like London at Christmas,' Ted says, and Andromeda can hear the enthusiasm radiating from his voice. 'The lights on Regent Street, the great Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square… it's heaven. I'll miss Hogwarts, though. I was here for Christmas last year, and it was wonderful.'

'I was just thinking how much I'll miss this place,' Andromeda sighs, and looks up again. Ted is gazing at her, an odd look in his eyes. 'You know,' she adds, standing up, 'there'll never be anywhere else like it, for the rest of our lives.'

'Nowhere could replace Hogwarts,' Ted says, handing over the papers he's picked up. 'But there will be other places just as special as here, for different reasons. One must always hope there will be. It would be dreadful if this was the end of everything that was extraordinary.'

Andromeda can't help her smile. 'You're wonderful, Ted,' she laughs. 'Always hopeful.'

'You're wonderful too, Andromeda Black,' Ted says, entirely serious. 'Not enough people tell you, but you're wonderful.' And he steps forward, and with papers and books sandwiched against their bodies, he kisses the girl. A kiss, light as a feather, as delicate as Andromeda herself. Andromeda kisses him back, wondering why it's taken her so long to do this. _Oh yes_, a small voice says inside her head, _because he's a Muggleborn, and your family will disown you for it_.

Finally they break apart, and it feels as if every hair on her body is standing on end.

'Come and see me, this Christmas,' Ted says quietly. 'Apparate, take the train or the tube or something. I want to see you, Andromeda. I can't face a whole holiday without you.'

'But my parents…'

'Don't listen to them,' Ted urges. 'Come and stay with me. Set yourself free from all of that; you don't need it.' He kisses her again, harder, more urgently. 'Oh, I've wanted you,' he whispers in her ear. 'You are so perfect.'

Andromeda wants this moment in the corridor to go on forever. She doesn't want to get on the Hogwarts Express, doesn't want to go home, and most certainly doesn't want to see her family.

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night  
Take these broken wings and learn to fly  
All your life  
You were only waiting for this moment to arrive._

It's been a week since she left school on the train, sitting three compartments away from Ted. A week since their eyes met for the final time in the middle of the crowded platform at Kings Cross; a week since he'd pushed some Muggle money into her hand along with a scrap of paper with instructions on how to get to his house in the East End of London. And now Andromeda is standing in the middle of her Aunt Walburga's drawing room at Grimmauld Place in the heart of London, listening to her lecturing Sirius about not running away from his cousin.

As she stands there, half listening to Walburga, she realises how much she hates Grimmauld Place. It stood for everything that was worst about her family. She looked up at the family tree, at the golden threads, at the _Toujours pur_. The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black left Andromeda cold.

'Look after him, Andromeda,' Walburga says, 'watch him like a hawk. He has a habit of running off.' Sirius, a moody eleven year old, says nothing, just looks at his mother with irritation writ large across his face.

'We won't be going far,' Andromeda smiles. 'Just walking to Diagon Alley, doing some Christmas shopping, perhaps going to have a walk by the Thames, then coming back. I'll keep an eye on him.'

The moment they leave the house, Andromeda turns to Sirius. 'If you foul this one up, you're in so much trouble,' she says, and the worry in her voice is so obvious than any authority she might have had is worthless.

Sirius grins. 'Where are you going again?' Andromeda pulls out the piece of paper.

'Bow Church,' she says, and sighs. 'What about you?'

'Oh, here and there,' Sirius smiles.

'You're eleven,' Andromeda groans, 'you shouldn't be going "here and there". Look, just meet me back at the underground station at quarter to four, OK?'

'Fine,' Sirius says, bored already with what he sees as his cousin's paranoia.

Andromeda has never been on the Underground before. She manages to successfully buy herself a ticket to Bow Church, and go down the escalators, and board the right train. She changes lines at a station in the heart of the city, full of people carrying bags of shopping. And then suddenly the train comes out into the light, and there she is in the East End at Bow Church station, and there is Ted on the platform, her Ted, her wonderful, amazing Ted. She runs into his arms, and they embrace in the cold December day.

Never has there been a day like this in her life. They take the train back into the centre of London, and walk along Regent Street, holding hands beneath the lights. They kiss before the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, oblivious to the tourists around them. They stand and marvel at the Christmas tree in the middle of Trafalgar Square, before Ted buys a bag of hot roasted chestnuts from a shrivelled old man on the edge of the square, and they sit on a bench together, huddled against each other, staying warm.

'I don't want to go back,' Andromeda says sadly as they walk back towards the underground. 'I want to stay with you. I want to come back with you to Bow…'

'So come back with me to Bow,' Ted says, entirely serious. 'You're of age; you're free to do whatever you want.'

'I couldn't just come and live with you!' Andromeda exclaims. 'And my family… they'd never speak to me again! Though that might be a benefit,' she adds, joking weakly.

'Come and run away with me,' Ted says suddenly. 'Let's go now. You don't have to see them again.'

'But I've got no money,' Andromeda says, 'and no clothes apart from these ones. And Sirius will be waiting for me…'

'He'll understand,' Ted says, delirious with the moment. 'Come away with me, Andromeda.' He stood before her, honest, open, direct. 'I can't promise you the earth; I can't even promise you a life like the one you've lived until now. Nothing like it. But I can promise you love, and adoration, and… me.'

By the time they reached Charing Cross, Andromeda had taken Ted's hand in her own, and resolved to never let go again.

_You were only waiting for this moment to arise_  
_You were only waiting for this moment to be free_  
_Blackbird fly, blackbird fly_  
_Into the light of the cold dark night._


End file.
